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1984 Themes and Quotations, Surveillance, ‘The terrible thing that the…

- - - - CRITICAL INTERPRETATION - "The Party isolates every individual, destroying all social bonds" - Kristoffer Rissanen
        
        "A human society stripped of the last shreds of community" - Daniel Bell 1949
      - “Sexual intercourse was to be looked on as a slightly disgusting minor operation, like having an enema. This again was never put into plain words, but in an indirect way it was rubbed into every Party member from childhood onwards.”
        Thinking back to his wife, Katharine, Winston reflects on the social programming that teaches Party members that sex is disgusting and only to be used for procreation. Examples he gives are arranged marriages between Party members and the existence of organizations like the Junior Anti-Sex League. Later, Julia will explain to Winston that the Party uses people’s suppressed sexual energy to fuel its marches and rallies and to keep people in line.
    - - CONTEXT: The Komsomols - (29 October 1918 - 28 September 1991). The Komsomols was an organization for young people aged 14 to 28 that was primarily a political organ for spreading Communist teachings and preparing future members of the Communist Party. the encouragement of these children occurred through persuasion. If they joined the group then they were automatically admitted into university, therefore there was tremendous amounts of pressure.
        
        CONTEXT: In 1984, the idea of torture and punishment methods create direct inferences to Stalin and the savage murder/ assassination of his party members. – Upon Stalin’s rise to power, some members of the former Bolshevik party began to question his authority. By the mid-1930s, Stalin believed anyone with ties to the Bolsheviks or Lenin’s government was a threat to his leadership and needed to go. – The Great Purge.
        
        "There are many parallels between Big Brother and Stalin" - Lynch
        
        In the former Soviet Union millions of men, women and children fell victims to the cruel actions and policies of the totalitarian regime. The Great Famine of 1932–1933 in Ukraine (Holodomor), took from 7 million to 10 million innocent lives and became a national tragedy for the Ukrainian people.
      - ‘he would shout and storm at her’ – Book 2, Chapter 7, pg. 187 – This was what Winston was like as a youth, which links to ‘the Spies’ and the Parsons’ children who were ‘savages’, despite being of a different generation.
      - ‘it was perfectly possible that she had merely been sent to a forced labour camp’. – Book 2, Chapter 7, pg. 189 – Winston talks about his mother. - This quote has links to Hitler’s reign and Nazi Germany, where there were concentration camps for those who opposed Hitler and those who were not Aryan.
        
        CONTEXT: Nazi Germany – Throughout Hitler's tyrannical reign, he enforced concentration camps for people . The Nazis indoctrinated children via schools and education, teaching them that ordinary people, more specifically the enemies of the Nazis and Jewish people were evil. The Party’s suppression of Emmanuel Goldstein also reflects the suppression of Jews and other ethnics in Nazi Germany.
    - - “The aim of the High is to remain where they are. The aim of the middle is to change places with the high. The aim of the low, when they have an aim […] is to abolish distinctions and create a society in which all men will be equal.” – Book 2, Chapter 9, pg. 231
        
        “Who wields power is not important, provided that the hierarchical structure remains always the same.” - Book 2, Chapter 9 P240
        
        “Inequality was the price of civilisation.” - Book 2, Chapter 9 pg.233
        
        “they are deliberate exercises in doublethink. For it is only by reconciling contradictions that power can be retained indefinitely.” - Book 2, Chapter 9, pg. 246
      - "The large mass of common people does not find in themselves the need to think independently" - Bossche
        
        "Winston and Julia come through as rudimentary human beings because they are slowly learning what it means to be human" - Irving Howe
      - “The proles are human beings...we are not human.” (B2C7)
    - - “The new tune which was to be the theme-song of Hate Week (the hate song it was called) had already been composed and was being endlessly plugged on the telescreen.” - Book 2, Chapter 5
        
        CONTEXT: Military parades linking to the Nuremburg Rallies.
        Goebbels was in charge of arranging and displaying propaganda around Nazi Germany e.g Posters. Patriotic music used by Soviets and Nazi Party in order to incite support for their regimes
        
        The Auschwitz sign that says “arbeit macht freit” meaning ‘work makes you free’ has connotations to the Party’s slogan of “freedom is slavery” (HITLER) - Mention the height of propaganda now in the Pandemic through the use of scaremongering tactics through the NHS adverts in order to keep people home etc - even the slogan “Stay home, Save Lives…” could link to the Party slogan. (Modern Day)
  - - - CONTEXTUAL LINKS: Stalin’s Collectivism (Stalin’s First Five Year Plan)
        Political propaganda (Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia)
        
        Major contributing factors to the famine include the forced collectivization of agriculture as a part of the Soviet first five-year plan, forced grain procurement, combined with rapid industrialisation, a decreasing agricultural workforce, and several bad droughts.
        
        The second plan (1933–37) continued the objectives of the first. Collectivization led to terrible famines, especially in the Ukraine, that caused the deaths of millions. The third (1938–42) emphasized the production of armaments. The fourth (1946–53) again stressed heavy industry and military buildup, angering the Western powers. In China, the first Five-Year Plan (1953–57) stressed rapid industrial development, with Soviet assistance; it proved highly successful.
- - - - Media Manipulation/Censorship
        
        "The primary function of the media here is to terrorize its citizens" - Douglas Kellner
        
        “‘Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.’”
        Syme explains the political goals of Newspeak to Winston. According to Syme, eliminating traditional words from the English language and replacing them with Party-approved concepts will rob English speakers of the ability to express concepts that counter the Party’s ideology. The influence of language on people’s ability to think is one of the book’s most enduring themes.
        
        “The lie became the truth.” (B1C7)
      - 'DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER'
    - - Chapter 8 - 'When once you have succumbed to thoughtcrime, it was certain that by a given date you would be dead' - Winston conveys the idea of fatalism in its bleakest form.
        
        ‘You do not exist’ – Book 3, Chapter 2, pg. 296 – the Party has the ability to make anyone who was once a citizen of Oceania ‘non-existent’, all details of their existence will be vaporised, and life will continue normally without them.
        
        “We are the dead.” (B2C10)
        
        “He was already dead, he reflected. It seemed to him that it was only now, when he had begun to be able to formulate his thoughts, that he had taken the decisive step.”
        Shortly after Winston begins keeping a diary of his subversive thoughts, he begins to think of himself as “already dead.” In this and other examples, the reader can see how thoroughly Winston has internalized the Party’s ideology. To disobey the Party is to gain a death sentence, or to commit social suicide, and Winston believes that he has forfeited his own life by committing thoughtcrime.
      - “In reality there was no escape.” - Book 2, Chapter 5
        
        “By sharing a small act of thoughtcrime he had turned the two of them into accomplices.” - Book 2, Chapter 6, pg.182
        
        “He had the sensation of stepping into the dampness of a grave, and it was not much better because he had always known that the grave was there and waiting for him” - Book 2, Chapter 6 p184
        
        Rebellion
        
        ‘For seven years I have watched over you […] I shall save you, I shall make you perfect.’ – Book 3, Chapter 2, pg. 280 – They first interacted 7 years ago, when O’Brien spoke to Winston ‘We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness’, connoting to Winston’s entrapment in Room 101. - Foreshadowing
        ‘I told you, that if we ever met again it would be here’. - Winston was given a completely false sense of rebellion.
        
        CRITICAL INTERPRETATION - 'His rebellion is ultimately false [...] because it is likely that the Party gave him the tools and motivation to act.' - Kristoffer Rissanen (2014) - 'Nineteen Eighty-Four and the Ideology of Hate'
        
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        "He was a weak creature born to be victimised" - John Atkins
        
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        'this produced in them no tendency whatever to rebel against the discipline of the Party' - Chapter 2 - The children lacked the ability to rebel as they were already completely subservient.
        
        “The first step has been a secret, involuntary thought, the second had been the opening of the diary. He had moved from thoughts to words, and now from words to actions” - Book 2, Chapter 6 - pg. 184 - This quote illustrating how Winston's fatalism has manifested and how it will occur and how this will lead to his vaporisation. - The last step was something that would happen in the Ministry of Love. He had accepted that the end was contained in the beginning'. - The reinforcement of the theme of fatalism. Room 101 is in the Ministry of Love, foreshadowing his own torture through the use of fatalism
        
        ‘When once they get hold of us, there will be nothing, literally nothing, that either of us can do for the other.’ – p192 – Fatalist mindset at they’re aware that they will be vaporised. It is just a matter of when.
        ‘Facts, at any rate, could not be kept hidden…. they could be squeezed out of you by torture’. – p192 - Book 2, Chapter 7
        
        “Pain is not always enough. There are occasions when a human being will stand out against pain, even to the point of death. But for everyone there is something unendurable.” (B3C5)
        
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        ‘But if the objective was not to stay alive but to stay human, what difference did it ultimately make.’ Book 2, Chapter 7 – p193 – The quote meaning that, to be truly alive is to have your humanity, the Party could kill you but if that idea did not affect them, then stripping them of their humanity and indoctrinating them first is what they would do. - Foreshadows the torturing of Winston in Room 101 by O'Brien.
        
        “‘We do not destroy the heretic because he resists us. . . . We convert him, we capture his inner mind, we reshape him.’”
        Inside the Ministry of Love, O’Brien explains to Winston that the ultimate goal of the Party’s punishments is to regain control over thought-criminals by changing their psychology and manipulating them into giving up their resistance. This speech emphasizes how thoroughly the Party wants to gain control over people’s thoughts and signals to Winston that O’Brien won’t be satisfied with false confessions.
        
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        ‘He was the tormentor, he was the protector, he was the inquisitor, he was the friend’ Book 3, Chapter 2 – pg280 – Though Winston has been betrayed and has been tortured brutally, because O’Brien has the drug which eases his pain, he still befriends him to an extent.
        
        CONTEXTUAL LINKS - The Gulag – A system of forced labour camps made in soviet Russia by Stalin. - Operated from the 1920s until shortly after Stalin's death in 1953.
        During the ensuing Great Terror, which included the notorious show trials of Stalin's former Bolshevik opponents in 1936-1938 and reached its peak in 1937 and 1938, millions of innocent Soviet citizens were sent off to labour camps or killed in prison. By the time the terror subsided in 1939, Stalin had managed to bring both the party and the public to a state of complete submission to his rule. Soviet society was so atomized and the people so fearful of reprisals that mass arrests were no longer necessary.
        
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